Unveiling the Benefits of Positive Education Programs

In a world where parents aspire for their children's happiness and success, the quest for the right education model becomes paramount. Positive education emerges as a promising approach, integrating traditional academics with strategies to foster well-being and positive character development. This article delves into the core principles of positive education, its implementation, and its potential benefits for students, teachers, and the overall school environment.

The Essence of Positive Education

Positive education is essentially a marriage of the science of positive psychology with best-practice teaching, a union that encourages and supports individuals, schools, and communities to flourish. It focuses on specific skills that assist students to strengthen their relationships, build positive emotions, enhance personal resilience, promote mindfulness, and encourage a healthy lifestyle. Seligman, a founder of positive psychology, incorporated positive psychology into education models as a way to decrease depression in younger people and enhance their wellbeing and happiness.

Core Principles and Frameworks

Education has long focused on academics and fostering positive character strength development. The VIA (Values in Action) classification provides a cross-culturally relevant framework for ‘educating the heart’. These positive characters aren’t innate; they’re external constructs that need to be nurtured.

Educating the Heart Through VIA Classification

The VIA classification provides a framework for educators to cultivate essential character strengths in students. This framework is cross-culturally relevant and emphasizes the importance of nurturing positive traits that are not inherent but rather developed through intentional effort.

Implementation in Schools

Positive education is being implemented in various ways across the globe, from integrating it into existing curricula to creating specialized programs.

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Curriculum Integration

For students at schools embracing positive education, it is incorporated into every course. For example, in an art class, students might explore the concept of flourishing by creating a visual representation of the concept.

Strengths-Based Interventions

These strengths-based interventions also focus on the relationship between teachers and students. Changes to these small interactions are significant, and paying attention to the wording of positive reinforcement can make a difference.

Restorative Practices

If a school disciplines a student, it’s usually because the student’s behavior had a specific effect on their environment. Let’s say Maria was talking too loudly during class, disrupting her peers’ ability to focus. In a more extreme case, like a student provoking and participating in a fight, the restorative practice would be more formal. The child would participate in a meeting with other students and adult leaders in the school. The student might also be assigned activities or programs that would help prevent further fights.

Jigsaw Classroom

The jigsaw classroom is a technique in which students are split into groups based on shared skills and competencies. Each student is assigned a different topic and told to find students from other groups who were given the same topic.

Student Empowerment

In positive psychology-influenced curricula, more power is given to the students in choosing their curriculum, and students are given responsibility from a much younger age.

Character Growth Cards

The acclaimed charter school network KIPP took many of these ideas and made them an official part of school protocol. Students at KIPP schools receive a Character Growth Card, which evaluates students’ performance not just for academic subjects like math and history, but also regarding a series of seven character traits. KIPP’s system enables the formal assessment of traits that fall outside the metrics used to assess students at most schools, and it teaches the importance of these character traits in a few ways. There are no formal lessons teaching character traits like zest or gratitude.

Bounce Back Program

The Bounce Back program is targeted to upper primary and lower secondary students, as adolescence is a critical period of change and stress for students. Noble and McGrath (2008) provided a series of practical, day-to-day school activities that helped students feel connected to their peers, school, and the community. To help students develop coping skills, the Bounce Back curriculum provides resources and suggestions for teachers and exercises for pupils. These principles have proven useful for other positive psychology client groups.

Global Initiatives

As positive education grows in popularity across the world, there are increasingly more global cases of its implementation at the system level. Israel’s Maytiv Positive Education Program starts in pre-school and stretches up to the high school level. Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority partnered with the South Australian Department of Education to conduct the Dubai Student Wellbeing Census. In Mexico, a partnership between the Jalisco Ministry of Education and University of Pennsylvania also resulted in randomized controlled studies at educational institutions, with promising results.

Rethinking Disciplinary Measures

Considering how many days of school and learning are lost to expulsions and suspensions, some school administrators are starting to rethink those methods. Many educators now think these disciplinary measures are unlikely to help children learn from their mistakes or prevent repeat behavior once the offending students are back in school. An alternative method, called restorative practice, is championed by some as an improvement upon the expulsion and suspension model (McCluskey et al., 2008). In this model, a meeting is held between the person who “offended” someone, the person directly affected by the offender, and the community entangled in this domino effect of actions.

Benefits of Positive Education

The benefits of positive education extend to students, teachers, and the overall school environment.

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For Students

Lots of studies have been done on positive education and its potential impacts. Clonan, Chafouleas, McDougal, and Riley-Tillman (2004) found that the incorporation of positive psychology in learning environments helped foster individual strengths. The results showed that following their life coaching sessions, students showed significant decreases in depression and increases in cognitive hardiness and hope (Green et al., 2007). A meta-analysis conducted by Sin and Lyubomirsky (2009) with 4,266 participants found that positive psychology interventions do significantly increase happiness and decrease depressive symptoms.

For Teachers

Positive education benefits teachers, too. It creates a school culture that is caring and trusting and prevents problem behavior. Research has shown that goals associated positively with optimism resulted in highly motivated students (Fadlelmula, 2010).

Penn Resiliency Program

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania developed the Penn Resiliency Program. Results from 19 controlled studies of the Penn Resiliency Program found that students in the program were more optimistic, resilient, and hopeful.

The Role of Character Traits

In Paul Tough’s (2013) book How Children Succeed, he argues that possessing inborn intelligence and academic competency is not enough for students to succeed in school. Instead, he argues that grit, resilience, and other character traits should receive a greater emphasis in schools.

Evidence-Based Activities

Positive Education focuses on specific skills that assist students to strengthen their relationships, build positive emotions, enhance personal resilience, promote mindfulness, and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

Animal Reflection

Students are invited to reflect on qualities in their favorite animal that represents how they want others to see them. For example, flamingo - elegant, graceful, etc. Next, they select another animal, and list how others may see them. For example, an owl - quiet, shy etc. Lastly, they select yet another animal and identify who they truly are.

Daily Mood Tracker

The Daily Mood Tracker enables students to keep a record of their emotional state throughout the day.

Identifying Gifts

This fun exercise can be used to motivate students to take a more active approach in dealing with challenging events. By understanding their own gifts - traits and talents - they build their self-esteem, vital to being resilient.

Resources for Further Exploration

If you want to learn more about positive education, try watching these videos on the subject. This video explains how the school helps students cope with the stressors of life and gives a glimpse of what goes on in a positive education classroom. At Perth College, skills of wellbeing are taught to girls as a core part of their educational program. This video focuses on a school that has wholly implemented positive education into their school program.

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